Latest version of files are suddenly

[69fbmustang]

I have used basic DB account that I have used for years and have never had an issue. 

It appears that my dropbox data reverted to the newest data being from April 2020. What happened? i have a couple of files that I edit every couple of weeks. They were last edited on January 24, 2021. When I went to edit them this morning, the last modify date on both was April 18, 2020.  I primarily edit them from my phone but nothing changed, no issues with the phone, etc.  If they were overwritten by a different device, woldn't all the old versions still be there? revHELP!!  I see no events listed in DB events.

[Jay]

Hi @69fbmustang, thanks for joining the Community!

It sounds like you might be signed into a different Dropbox account, since there are old files on the account?

Can you see any event history, or deleted files on your account?

This will help me to assist further!

[69fbmustang]

To my knowledge, I only have 1 dropbox account.  I have only used the one that I am aware of and I see all the files I expect to see, they are just older than expected.   Changes over the last 10 months are gone.   I do not add/remove many files and probably have not added any since last April and I doubt I have removed any either.   It says there is nothing recent in the deleted files.   The events, seems like it should show something but does not.  Not even prior to the dates on the current files.

Since COVID, due to my working situation, I suspect i had always updated the two files I am interested in on my phone.  They were both Excel files.  Is it possible that Excel was editing a local copy of the file all this time instead of the actual DB copy of the file and my phone somehow lost the local copy of the file?  I don't know why it would have as I have not switched phones or re-loaded my phone or anything.

[Jay]

If you didn't open the Excel file via the Dropbox mobile app, it's certainly possible. 

Do you see your mobile device on this page? If you open the Dropbox mobile app and then open the Excel file from there, does it have the latest information?

[69fbmustang]

Thanks for the response.

I do see my device on that page, but I do not see the latest files in the dropbox app on that device.   I know I had a shortcut on my home screen of my device to the Excel files but in the past, that had updated DB whenever I exited the file.   Maybe something changed with Excel and it was no longer updating the correct file (in DB).  I have adjuted to the idea of having lost the files at this point so i will have to move on and learn to verify that DB is actually getting updated if I do something like that.

[Jay]

It's possible there might be some backup feature in the Excel app, perhaps a cached copy somewhere, so you could try checking with Microsoft support to see if that's possible.